On the 7th of April 20 men were
reported to have been shot dead by a police posse in an encounter in the Seshachalam
forests near Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh. These men were allegedly involved in
cutting down precious red sander (red sandal) trees which grow well in the area.
Felling of red sanders is a banned operation in Andhra as the state government
is going the extra mile to protect this precious species. Interestingly, all
the 20 who died were from Tamilnadu. The police version is that they, along
with over a hundred others were part of the flourishing red sanders smuggling network.
When a team from the newly-formed anti-smuggling task force, who were searching
the forest for smugglers, accosted them, the wood cutters are reported to have
pelted stones at the police party. Fearing for their lives, the policemen retaliated
with gun fire, killing 20 of the so-called smugglers. The rest of the wood
cutters, numbering over a 100, escaped. Vanished without a trace!
History has shown
that policemen make poor scriptwriters. And the police version of the course of
events is full of holes. The initial autopsy reports indicate that most of
those who died had been shot from close range – an unlikely eventuality if the
wood cutters were pelting stones at the police party from a distance. Most of
the shots had gone through the victims’ vital organs, killing them immediately,
indicating a high degree of precision marksmanship. Which means that the shooters
must have been of a calibre superior to Abhinav Bhindra, Olympic gold medallist
in shooting, considering that they were firing at moving targets, while facing
a fusillade of pelted stones in the dim light of a thick forest!
The next
interesting fact is that while shots were fired at over a 100 marauding wood
cutters, 20 ended up stone cold dead, while not even one was caught alive or
wounded.
The bodies of the
dead were left for display before the media for several hours on a warm summer
day before being sent for autopsy. Those who conducted the post mortem have
recorded that the bodies were received by them in an advanced stage of
decomposition making the examination very difficult.
One Sekhar of
Tiruvannamalai District has stirred the hornets nest by revealing that he, along
with 7 others had been hired for a wood-cutting assignment in
Andhra only the previous day. While they were travelling to their destination
by bus, a police party had stopped the vehicle at a check post. Sekhar’s
associates had all been picked up by the police and whisked away. Since Sekhar
was sitting next to a woman on the bus, he had been mistaken for a family man
and not taken away. According to Sekhar, all his seven associates ended up as
dead bodies in the “encounter” the following day. If Sekhar’s version is found
to be true, the “encounter” would turn
out to be cold-blooded mass murder.
Quite obviously
the Andhra police, and the state Government, have a lot of explaining to do in
the forthcoming days and weeks, especially considering that the courts of laws and
human rights institutions have suo moto started asking uncomfortable questions
in the full view of an agitated public and the media.
The incident has also
come as Manna from heaven for some of Tamilnadu’s political orphans, who have
been robbed of all their steam after the annihilation of the LTTE in Sri Lanka,
followed by a change of government in the Island republic. The Vaikos and the Seemans,
who had been starved for months for a juicy issue to bite into, have jumped
into the fray like wolves baying for justice. For these worthies, the killing
of the 20 wood cutters is not a human rights issue but an “insane attack
against the Tamil people”!
The Chandrababu
Naidu government in Andhra Pradesh has taken the fizz out of the politically
sponsored agitations in Tamilnadu by strategically announcing the release of
water from the River Krishna at Kandaleru to meet the drinking water needs of
Chennai – a subtle reminder that if the agitations escalate to embarrassing
levels, the Krishna canal could suddenly develop a fresh series of breaches
which would render Chennai waterless this summer!
Further, one of
the Andhra Pradesh ministers has neutralised the Tamilnadu government by
comparing the massacre to the slaughter of the notorious sandalwood smuggler
Veerappan and his associates by the Tamilnadu special task force in 2004, when
the AIADMK dispensation under Jayalalithaa was in power.
The political
charades will be played out. So will the trial by the media. Several
fact-finding missions will look into the incident. Several commissions of
inquiry will be set up. Already a magisterial inquiry has commenced. There is a
demand for an inquiry by a sitting High Court judge. Some opportunists, wishing
to play the linguistic card have demanded an inquiry by a judge from a High
Court other than Andhra or Tamilnadu. There is a demand for a CBI
investigation. The Supreme Court is being moved by some groups. The state and
National Human Rights Commissions are all seized of the matter and demanding explanations...
And this brings
us to the key issues that have to be looked at, but will most certainly be
conveniently ignored :
- Why the hullabaloo over Red Sanders?
Red Sanders is a
hard wood with medicinal properties, the paste of which was traditionally used
in Ayurveda to treat skin infections and pimples. The wood was also used to
carve little human and animal figurines which was used a playthings by the
generations past. Of late, however, the wood of the red sanders tree is being
smuggled out of India, mainly to China, where it is reportedly being used as an
absorbent of nuclear radiation in nuclear plants. One red sanders tree, which
when shorn of the branches could weigh about 100 kilograms, is reported to
fetch in the region of Rs 25 lakhs in the smugglers’ market. And it is this
lucrative market that the smugglers network is trying to cater to.
- Why were all those who were shot dead only Tamils?
Most of the
workers hired to cut the red sanders trees in Andhra are tribals from
Tamilnadu, particularly from the Javadhu Hills area of Tiruvannamalai district.
This region is particularly arid and agricultural activities come to a halt
with the advent of summer. The tribals are lured with wages of Rs 1000 per day
during which they not only fell a tree each, but also carry it to a loading
site several kilometres away. Being tribals who have spent all their lives in
forest terrain, they accomplish this task with ease. They also are adept at
identifying the precious red sanders trees.
- Why did the 20 woodcutters have to be so mercilessly massacred?
The
incidents of red sanders smuggling has been increasing by the day and the police
force of Andhra Pradesh has been under tremendous pressure from the judiciary
and the media to do something about it. The Andhra Pradesh government had
earlier made the felling of red sanders illegal and had also constituted a
special task force to control the smuggling activities. This force had to do
something to show the world that they are doing their work. And what better way
than to shoot down a few tribals from a different state and blame them for all
the smuggling activities that was going on?
But
obviously, the one who wrote the script and directed the farce was not an
experienced hand. The script was flawed. The writer had not taken the huge public
outcry and the interference of the human rights activists and the judiciary
into account. As far as the police were concerned, the real smugglers’ names
had to be protected. What better way than to shoot dead a few wood cutters,
blame them for all the smuggling activity that has been taking place for years
in the area? After all, they felt, DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES.
The
whole incident reminds me of words that were scribbled on the walls of Dartmoor
Prison in London : “I walk through the
prison; and what do you think I see? A host of dumb-bells doing time, while all
the crooks go free!!”
The incident also
reminds me of a blog penned by my Guru in Journalism, Pritish Nandy, which I am
appending below :
http://www.rediff.com/news/2000/dec/09nandy.htm
In short, what I am trying to say is that
after the initial brouhaha dies down, this reprehensible incident will also be
forgotten and consigned to the annals of history. The real red sanders mafia
will continue to flourish like the granite mafia, the sand mafia, the coal
mafia, the rare-earth mafia and so many other mafias that call the shots in
various parts of India. It will fund political parties, get peoples’
representatives elected, launch newspapers and TV channels and lecture to the
world about lofty issues like human rights violation and corruption. And
periodically the Seshachalam encounter will be revisited, whenever there is a
public clamour about the state’s ineptitude to tackle crime.
